Crochet!!!

Once in a while, my brain does a complete turn about and I have to go explore something new and interesting, or at least different from what I've been working on.  In this case, I fell down the Yarn Rabbit Hole.  I have been storing up patterns for future kid-grandkid-friend presents, and have made a few things.  It's nice to find a good stitch that doesn't take too much concentration, and then sit with the spousal unit watching our shows in the evening. 

But the challenge has taken hold and...I want to learn more.  I want to learn something that I have to pay attention to, something TV won't work with.  I'm not anti-TV, I just want to make the brain cells grunt a little.  Ha!

 

So I made a poncho for the mother in law, and she liked it (I modeled it in the bathroom mirror--the time-honored selfie pose).  See, the thing is this: I've crocheted since I was a kid.  Maybe ten?  My mom was left-handed, and I'm right-handed, so that was my first challenge.  I never learned how to read or follow a pattern (I stink at recipes too), so anything I made was...um, unique. 

My first real crochet was Amigurumi--before we knew to call it that.  I was seventeen, preggers with my first kid, and had no toys for him.  (Eloping with a biker at sixteen turned out to be a bad idea.)  So I made up my own clowns and alligators, blankets and little dangely things for a red-neck mobile.  Of course, everything was eye-balled instead of counted, so limbs on animals were a little wonky, and one eyeball might be bigger than the other.  The kiddo didn't seem to mind, so that worked out. 

Then after a few more attempts and frustration--due to me not knowing more than maybe four basic stitches, or how make even edges--I put it aside for a while.  "A while" meaning a decade.  Or three. 

But I got some library books recently, and you know what?  It's amazing what you can learn from them!  So here I am, wondering if I can actually do Tunisian stitch, or even (dare I say it?) knit??? 

So while the dolls are shouting from the studio, and our time til House Listing is closing in on us, I sit here crocheting a lovely shrug in shades of blue and green, and ignoring all the "supposed to" stuff in that studio.  And trying not to buy more yarn. 

I hope your Wednesday is a fine one.  And that you get a chance to challenge your brain cells!